IMHO, the best and most focused presentation at this inaugural version of the Open Source Business Conference Europe was the panel Risk that proprietary software vendors face in using open source with Larry Robins and Jason Wacha.

Among the key points:

Open source is viral, closed source is terminal

There has not been any relevant lawsuit – including SCO – regarding GPL in 15 years

Want to avoid litigation? Get out of proprietary software!

Also an interesting – and heated – discussion between Jason Wacha and the strong team of Microsoft lawyers in the audience. In his presentation Jason Wacha questioned Microsoft’s motives with respect to software patents. He implied that Microsoft might by using patents to defend themselves from competition from in particular Linux. This was – expectedly – heavily contested by the Microsoft people present.

On another note, it is interesting how Microsoft has a massive presence at all conferences where open source is discussed.

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